List of books that will induce a mindfuck

https://everything2.com/title/Books+that+will+induce+a+mindfuck

by beowulfey • 2 years ago

55 110 2 years ago

everything2.com

comboy2• 2 years ago

Uh, I'd love some recommendations fitting the title, but many of those on the list are definitely not that.

vidarh4• 2 years ago

I think I've read about a quarter of the list, and only a couple of the ones I've read fit that title to me. I wish the list contained a line explaining why...

d1sxeyes• 2 years ago

Hard to do that without making at a 'list of books that will induce a mindfuck and their spoilers'

the_clarence• 2 years ago

I can't get interested in a book if I don't get a warm recommendation. Anyone want to recommend one of the books in that list?

Morac0o• 2 years ago

Same happens to me, and if I am not interested I can not focus on reading it.

Hikikomori5• 2 years ago

Neuromancer and Snow Crash are usually recommended here.

mindcrime2• 2 years ago

Before looking at the list, two of the books that came to my mind as possible candidates were Permutation City by Greg Egan, and Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Permutation City made the list, and I definitely endorse it.

Glasshouse is not on the list, but I definitely think it's worth a read.

Neuromancer is on the list and it may be my personal favorite novel (if not #1 on my list, it's very close).

A couple of Murakami novels were on the list here. I've read several of his novels and would basically make a blanket statement "read anything by Murakami".

somedude8954• 2 years ago

I'm about 200 pages into 1Q84, and am not really enjoying it. Is it just not for me, or does it just take a while to get into?

darkfloo• 2 years ago

Iain M Banks use of weapon is both an incredibly good book and a portal to the culture series , in which almost all books are just as good.

euroderf• 2 years ago

The Culture series permanently changed my perspective on the universe. Earth is just one more of the oddball primitive worlds well off the beaten path.

lukan4• 2 years ago

Many are just classics (and not mindfuck in my opinion).

Hesse is good in general.

Kafka is good in a weird fucked up way and to be recommended after one had to deal with the legal system for example.

Castaneda is interesting fantasy, but many took it literal and a real cult evolved around his books (with him included as the Guru).

Peter Caroll is interesting, if you like the occult.

And Robert Anton Wilsons Illuminatus! is the bible of conspiracy theories.

(But a really good book and deserving of the mindfuck category, I think it popularized the term mindfuck)

vidarh4• 2 years ago

The Trial does deserve the term mindfuck, I think, both because of the story and because it upends the notion of what most people expect of a novel. Kafka's other words are weird and wonderful and not nearly as hard to read as some seem to think, but if you've read The Trial, they're not very mindfuck-y, and that's a big problem with a list like this - each book you read that is still a mindfuck will make a lot of the rest seem pretty pedestrian (though often still good).

kranner• 2 years ago

Tor Nørretranders' The User Illusion was a great read, hereby warmly recommended. One of the principal ideas was that our senses take in many orders of magnitude more of data than we are able to be conscious of. I believe he estimated something like 10 Mbps taken in and 80? baud being aware of — something like that, I should read it again sometime.

thefz• 2 years ago

John dies at the end -> all the other books. Silly scify nonsense that will have you giggling. Oh, and the Zoey Ashe trilogy too.

comboy2• 2 years ago

Read them all and highly recommend them, but to be clear, these are not mindfucks, It's just well written entertainment, nothing ambitious.

paxys• 2 years ago

"Mindfuck" is being used a bit loosely. The is mostly just a list of top sci-fi/fantasy books that the internet crowd generally likes.

Cthulhu_• 2 years ago

The page links to another page where the term is described, but also refutations that it's used in a different connotation.

mahrain• 2 years ago

Missing murakami's 1Q84

satvikpendem• 2 years ago

I started reading his latest book released in English this month, pretty interesting so far.

flanked-evergl12• 2 years ago

After being indoctrinated to hate everything about the west and Christianity for most of my life — through school, university, news media, entertainment, and the administrative state — and after coming to hate the west and Christianity as a consequence of this indoctrination, I really found the following books to be the ultimate mindfucks:

- Heretics by GK Chesterton

- Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton

- Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America by Mary Grabar

- A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

- Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland

somedude8954• 2 years ago

A Conflict of Visions is a good one. Thomas Sowell is a true intellectual. Sure, he has strong biases, but I believe those developed out of his intense study of the facts, rather than being implanted in him before he started thinking for himself, which is sadly the case for many so-called intellectuals nowadays.

If you could recommend only one of the others, which would it be?

flanked-evergl12• 2 years ago

Heretics GK Chesterton. By far one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read it about 10 times by now.

One gem from the first chapter:

"When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed."

Hikikomori5• 2 years ago

Understanding our past and knowing we did some pretty fucked up shit isn't hating the west, its dealing with it and learning from it. I think you would agree that how Germany has dealt with their past is good compared to sweeping it under the rug and saying that while Hitler did some bad stuff he had some good points.

somedude8954• 2 years ago

There's understanding and recognizing past errors, and then there's developing an actual negative view on the whole of something. Germany is a good example of that as well. Pride and patriotism became such dirty words that nobody dares use them, even if it's in a balanced way. And as we can see that then leads to extreme counter-movements. The West and its institutions in general definitely went overboard on painting their own countries, religions and institutions in an almost exclusively negative way, which is basically cultural suicide.

flanked-evergl12• 2 years ago

The way Germany has "dealt" with its past is by trying to commit suicide, and they are attempting to pull the whole rest of Europe down into hell with it.

After recognizing that they have done evil, they have proclaimed that nobody can do good. After recognizing there are wrong things to do, they have proclaimed that there are no right things to do. After recognizing that patriotic people can do evil things, they have proclaimed that patriotic people can only do evil things. After recognizing their reason for being was evil, they proclaimed that every nation's reason for being is evil.

Germany has not dealt with its past at all, which is why all their conclusions are lies. Their conclusions are designed to erase their own culpability. If all the world is just as evil as them, if everything is a gray and there is no good and evil, then how can they bear any responsibility?

Even discarding their obvious moral failings, just as a practical matter, the recent leadership of Germany has been disastrous for the European continent and has resulted in wars and economic disasters.

hagbard_c3• 2 years ago

A single-sided focus on the negative aspects of western society and its actions combined with a Rousseau-inspired 'noble savage' attitude towards non-western societies is hating the west and is most likely what the grandparent poster refers to. All the vices attributable to western society - slavery, colonialism, brutality, sexism and all the other -isms - can also be attributed to other societies but these go mostly unmentioned or are mentioned in passing without leaving a mark while they are portrayed as being essential elements of western cultures.

eddyg• 2 years ago

Debunking Howard Zinn⁽¹⁾ doesn’t get nearly enough “publicity” (for lack of a better word), especially considering how much A People’s History of the United States is “pushed”.

⁽¹⁾ https://www.regnery.com/9781684511525/debunking-howard-zinn/

NotAFerret91• 2 years ago

A Regnery citation is to be believed? I’m a Regnery and that side of family is alt-right lol. Now under Eagle, but the name alone makes me think Zinn was right.

FooBarBizBazz3• 2 years ago

This "the West and Christianity" thing may reinforce dichotomies that we do not need (East vs West), while glossing over essential distinctions (Christianity vs its Abrahamic roots).

Yes, much is good about Christianity, and yes, it caught on in the West -- but it originated in the Near East, and Ethiopians and Keralites had it first (and still do). Moreover, prior to the Islamic conquests, it was widespread in the countries that we now think of as Muslim. So, while it is central to the culture of Europe, it is also a bit of an adopted alien -- and it is not unique to Europe.

Second, many Protestant readings of Christianity embrace the Old Testament, while underemphasizing the break from Old Testament practices and thought that it represented. You would think that Protestant culture would be more immune to this, because it emphasizes literacy and directly reading the book. But somehow that has led to an uncritical understanding of the Old Testament, instead of to a more Gnostic repudiation. Paul is best in this regard.

Because it is precisely Christianity's reformist elements that made it good. Its universalism. Its New Covenant.

Anyway.

I do appreciate your CK Chesterton references. Some of those are also among my favorites. I very much enjoyed The Man Who was Thursday, one of his works of fiction, a sort of novel -- which, I will only say, subverts expectations, and turns out to be more than a bit philosophical!

flanked-evergl12• 2 years ago

The best response I can give to you is quoting Chesterton's Heretics:

"Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper question to ask, “What can they know of England who know only the world?” for the world does not include England any more than it includes the Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the world—that is, all the other miscellaneous interests—becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one’s self “unspotted from the world;” but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the “world well lost.” Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth—the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. Thus Mr. Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world, with all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet. He knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice. He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place. The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes. We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe."

washadjeffmad2• 2 years ago

I'm from the opposite world, the US, where religion, education, and the state have been at nontrivial risk of becoming the same things, depending on where in the country you live.

Needless to say, those are all very different reads after experiencing an attempted ethnonationalist theocracy as a member of a non-dominant group. I'm not against religion, but I don't care for Christian apologism or its blindness to its effects; like political centrism, it seems to unify towards incumbent power and authoritarianism, only entrenching factionalization and incompatibility.

flanked-evergl12• 2 years ago

First I have heard of an attempted ethnonationalist theocracy in the US, mind citing what you are talking about?

scruple• 2 years ago

I have had the exact same experience, and I would also add CS Lewis Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce to the list.

tharmas• 2 years ago

And I would add William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell to that list.

After all, it's the anniversary of his Birthday today.

geraldog2• 2 years ago

I'd add Poker Without Cards by Ben Mack.

geraldog2• 2 years ago

Also, New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson. A huge treatise on epistemology and philosophy of Science and much more "mindfucker" than his fiction.

chaostheory• 2 years ago

I’m surprised that everything2 is still not mobile friendly.

relaxing3• 2 years ago

I’m not. Every attempt to fix the site has failed due to the incredibly fucked up use of turn of the century style PHP.

kthejoker2• 2 years ago

Perl, not PHP.

Source: was turn of the century developer at Everything2

AntoniusBlock• 2 years ago

No Gaddis? What a shame. Everyone ITT should check out Gaddis' `The Recognitions' and `J.R.' (and his other books, of course).

Yizahi3• 2 years ago

Skimmed through the list.

First problem - it is gigantic. Statistically there is no chance that so many books are so revolutionary genius that they are on some other level etc.

Second problem - it is a generic top100/top500 style list, populated by exact same old "classic" fiction books like every other list on the internet.

There are some "above average" books intersperced in this list, but a casual reader will not know how to find them among the books being there simply on the virtue of being good and 50-100 years old. Being old book is not a virtue, unless we are in a history class.

tarboreus• 2 years ago

Wow, 50 years, so old.

It strikes me as a pretty decent list. The books on here I've read (maybe 30%) are worthy of recommendation.

People always get offended by lists, I've noticed.

vidarh4• 2 years ago

Most of them are worthy of recommendation, but few of them are "mindfucks". Very few have ideas that are particularly out there or unusual.

tenderfault• 2 years ago

"Revolutionary Road", by Richard Yates. Because it uncovers the greatest conspiracy of our time. Also "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy, for the same reason.

The real so called "mindfuck" comes when what you read unravels the reality around you, not when it sends you in some utopia with the promise of a metaphor built to solve a great mistery you actually don't give a f... about.

P.S.This is just one of the HN threads which is more valuable than the article it refers to.

Thank you for all the good books mentioned here, HN!

deafpolygon• 2 years ago

As a teenager (30 years ago), I found this book to be a bit of a mindfuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun

I have heard of most on this list for obvious reasons but this book really got me to see war in a different light.

medo-bear10• 2 years ago

What a huge ommision not to include anything from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles. The blokes 'mindfucked' the entire world during the last century

hagbard_c3• 2 years ago

There are other blokes who mindfucked the world and penned down some of their ideas who similarly, and maybe for similar reasons did not make the list. There's Mao Tse-Tung's 'Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung' and other works published in his name [1], countless works 'by' Joseph Stalin [2], Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and other works in his name [3] just to mention a few. All of these had great impact on the world and inspired countless people just like the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I suspect this is not the type of inspiration the authors of the list are looking for, hence their omission.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4797485.Mao_Zedong

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/138332.Joseph_Stalin

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30691.Adolf_Hitler

medo-bear10• 2 years ago

Marx and Engels were philosophers, not statesmen. Nietzsche is there but Hitler took alot of influence from him. Nietzsche was to Hitler what Marx was to Stalin.

Hitler was financed by people who opposed the ideas by Max and Engels. People in Germany largely hate Hitler. Stalin did some horrible things primarily to Russians, but people in Russia to this day love Stalin. Same thing with Mao

omega3• 2 years ago

There Is No Antimemetics Division deserves a mention as well.

JakDrako• 2 years ago

It's on there... you just can't remember seeing it.

Yizahi3• 2 years ago

qntm recently wrote that he will do a "remastered" version 2 of the book next year v1 will remain freely accessible as it is now). Can't wait to reread it :)

smitty1e3• 2 years ago

I have a copy of Zinn, and one must know that he brings to his alleged task of writing history a deep Communist bias against his subject.

Not that the United States is above criticism; just understand that there is a lack of balance on offer.

popularrecluse• 2 years ago

Zinn is extra credit for people that actually know history. He says it right in the preface, it's one-sided, it's the history that is generally left out of your textbooks. You guys have your panties in a bunch over anything that challenges your hierarchical worldview.

smitty1e3• 2 years ago

As stated

Not that the United States is above criticism

I'd be the first to admit that, for all its virtues, the U.S. Constitution (almost) completely blew off foreign policy.

High time to re-think that, instead of letting unelected pencil-necks spread woe globally.

delichon• 2 years ago

I appreciate that Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is in the same list. It's a sort of balance, expounding on the converse ideology. You can play mindfuck ping pong between the two. Cheers for the author's open mind, without which mindfuckery is at best foreplay.

smitty1e3• 2 years ago

I've slogged through both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". Her model of human nature is soulless, IMO.

FooBarBizBazz3• 2 years ago

Blindsight by Peter Watts.

That messed with my head but good.

And not necessarily in a good way.

But I have to mention it.

Yizahi3• 2 years ago

That one definitely fits definition perfectly. Still can't forget that idea, brr. Scary.

anthk• 2 years ago

As a Spaniard, I don't find South American magical realism books 'mindfuckey', but maybe a bit half-unsetting and half-romantic, as if you gave some kind of personality to the environment itself.

On Focault's Pendulum, [Spoilers, rot13] Gur jubyr obbx vg'f nobhg znxvat sha ba pbafcvenabvqf

bwb• 2 years ago

I am a big fan of

Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

By Daniel Pinchbeck

Amazing book

djkivi• 2 years ago

Missing The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Mind fucked…

gom_jabbar• 2 years ago

Nietzsche is on the list, but Nick Land's Fanged Noumena is clearly missing. As Mark Fisher has written about Land's work:

"There was a great deal of cyber-theory around in the 1990s but none of it seemed to come from inside the machines – which is to say, outside us – in the way that Land's did." [0]

[0] https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10459/1/...

sourcepluck• 2 years ago

Ooh thanks for the quote, I'll happily follow up on something Fisher says is worth a look.

IHLayman• 2 years ago

One book not on that list that really threw me recently was The Anomaly [0]. The less you know about it going in the better.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anomaly_(novel).

bloak• 2 years ago

I was amused to see "The Outsider" and "The Stranger" as two books by Albert Camus, though "The Outsider" seems to link to novels by Colin Wilson and Stephen King. "L'Étranger" is a good book and not too hard to read in French because it's written in a colloquial style, or you could read one of the many translations: at least four just in English.

There are a lot of books in that list that I liked so I should probably pay some attention to the ones that I haven't yet looked at.